Considering white supremacy shaped society in American 19th century, texts like Herman Melville's Benito Cereno and Frederick Douglass’ The Heroic Slave reveal that white individuals rely on performance to interact with others, and thus, blacks are also forced into performing specific roles. The traditional white role, as seen in the two texts, is to uphold the superiority of the white race by uniting against the black one. Contrastingly, the black race is expected to play the part of a dutiful servant. As a result, black characters in these two texts, for the sake of survival, recognize the importance of complying with performance when in the presence of whites. More significantly, it is evident through the black characters’ acquiescence to
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In order to comprehend the reason black performance exists in the presence of white characters, Melville and Douglass implicitly endow their black characters with double consciousness. As expressed by W. E. B. Du Bois in “The Souls of Black Folk,” double consciousness is the “peculiar sensation” in which the black man “yields [. . .] no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world” in which they can only look “ at one's self through the eyes of others” (Du Bois). It is only through a filtered lens of white supremacy that the enslaved characters can view themselves. Consequently, the inability to possess an individual self-consciousness, due to the imposition of only being able to see oneself through the eyes of the white man, forces black individuals to perform the role that white people desire. By fulfilling the role, black individuals are simultaneously able to satisfy the white men and gratify their own personal “twoness” (Du Bois). As a result, the double consciousness in Benito Cereno for example, leads to “the spectacle that first greets Captain Delano upon boarding the distressed San Dominick” which Jean Fagan Yellin categorizes as “a saturnalia or “black masque” in which Don Benito, in his exaggerated white finery” is expected to fulfil his position as a white authority figure (Yellin). Once the American white man sets foot on the ship, the slave’s double consciousness is activated and it is only because of this that their performance is possible. In being able to perceive themselves through the eyes of Captain Delano, their roles are convincing and Delano does not ascertain the
In order to comprehend the reason black performance exists in the presence of white characters, Melville and Douglass implicitly endow their black characters with double consciousness. As expressed by W. E. B. Du Bois in “The Souls of Black Folk,” double consciousness is the “peculiar sensation” in which the black man “yields [. . .] no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world” in which they can only look “ at one's self through the eyes of others” (Du Bois). It is only through a filtered lens of white supremacy that the enslaved characters can view themselves. Consequently, the inability to possess an individual self-consciousness, due to the imposition of only being able to see oneself through the eyes of the white man, forces black individuals to perform the role that white people desire. By fulfilling the role, black individuals are simultaneously able to satisfy the white men and gratify their own personal “twoness” (Du Bois). As a result, the double consciousness in Benito Cereno for example, leads to “the spectacle that first greets Captain Delano upon boarding the distressed San Dominick” which Jean Fagan Yellin categorizes as “a saturnalia or “black masque” in which Don Benito, in his exaggerated white finery” is expected to fulfil his position as a white authority figure (Yellin). Once the American white man sets foot on the ship, the slave’s double consciousness is activated and it is only because of this that their performance is possible. In being able to perceive themselves through the eyes of Captain Delano, their roles are convincing and Delano does not ascertain the